Long time no post, or, what I found out about myself today

Met a couple of fellow old-timers today (if you're reading this, hi!), and it does seem I've moved on, and, more importantly: I've moved on to expressing my anger. Which is good!

Anger is a normal reaction to having been (metaphorically) tossed around like a rag doll in a dryer. Anger is a perfectly normal response to people trying to treat your body as public property.

I'd like to leave this trans crap well alone, but it won't leave me

Here's what, you Good People:

• I'm not your, or anyone else's, badge of tolerance
• neither I'm a collectible item to add to your collection of "different" friends that you can then parade in front of people you want to impress with your, I dunno, breadth of humans you know. Should you do this to me, let me assure you you're no friend. Friends don't objectify their friends.
• I'm not different, unique, or anything else special. I'm a normal human being who's had incredibly strange things happen to her.
• Aaaand finally bugger all this trans shit. Shove it where the sun doesn't shine and leave it there.

The last hurrah, or opt me out

It's highly likely I'll just bugger off and stop blogging about teh trans, but before I go, I'd like to say this:

Trans is a term of oppression.

This is why:

• it hides very real differences between rather disparate groups of people. Lumping together crossdressers, trans men, trans women, genderqueers, third genders and what not makes just one unhappy bunch that has one thing in common: oppression. But even that oppression isn't the same for all concerned; the things that can be of utmost importance to some trans women (for example, vaginoplasty, or HRT) might be totally irrelevant to some other group.
• it lets the cis very conveniently off the hook: it lets them treat us as the other, the false to their authentic selves.
• the constant dissension between disparate groups thus forced together destabilises and undermines attempts to fight oppression.
• it keeps us trying to find common ground in identities when there is none.

I'm not expecting much love for saying this, but I think these identity-things have to go. Identity politics does not work.

I'm proposing fighting specific problems, one at a time, until they're all solved. The solutions must be such that they don't oppress other marginalised groups. "Trans" as a concept is mostly useless for this. Access to care is not a trans-specific issue, it's a healthcare issue. Violence is not a trans issue, it's a power issue, even if it affects trans-identified (identified as trans by others - most people can't tell how you identify if you don't conform to their stereotypes) people more than usual.

I'm also bone-tired of this stuff. I need to rest from this and live my life and protect myself and my sanity. I didn't ask my life to be centred around trans, and there's not that much stopping me from decentring trans in my life. Which is what I've been doing more lately (thanks go to my wonderfully sane and caring therapist, too). So - off I go, thanks for everything, I might not return.

Oh, and I love the acronym CAMAB. It just about sums up my experience.

Slut

There's been a Slutwalk in my home town. It bothered me quite a bit, but I couldn't lay my finger on what it was that bothered me, considering I quite agree with the people organising the thing with the issues: blaming the raped woman for the rape is just sick, and yeah, no means no and yes means yes - that's the way it should go. Period.

The presentation bothered me, especially the "slut" bit. I'm not one to shirk from four-letter words, so I kinda suspect it wasn't that - yet the choice of word in the name left me feeling that this is not for me and I'd just feel wrong participating. Not wrong in the sense of morally wrong, wrong against the organisers, but wrong in the sense that I'd wrong against myself, against who I am by marching with these people. My feeling is not universal, not even amongst Finnish (trans) women, but I know I'm not alone, either.

Finally, I found this excellent bit of thinking (read the comments, too, they're full of win also), and the bits finally clicked into place. I found this bit especially pertinent to my thinking:

"Therefore, the word slut has not been used to discipline (shame) us into chaste moral categories, as we have largely been understood to be unable to practice “normal” and “chaste” sexuality anyway."

As if "slut" was somehow a unifying experience. It's not. I've personally been told I'm a pervert. I've been called a tranny. I've been called sick, mentally ill, deluded, twisted, mad, sexually deviant. There's bunches of books naturalising all of that, too, from respectable publishers. The minority I find myself in is more often than not depicted in the media and literature as hypersexual obsessive-compulsives hell bent on plastic surgery, sexy clothing, high heels and makeup (you want examples? Go see Skip the Makeup). I've been told that I can't possibly be a woman, no matter what the evidence to the contrary. And obviously, if I dare raise my voice against this, I must be either a pathetic loonie or an evil liar.  Nice options, those. 

But I haven't been called a slut, and I think that's 'cos that would've implied I'm a woman, and that was something the cisarchy was hell bent on not doing, ever. And besides, "slut" doesn't quite carry the institutional power like slapping a diagnosis does, or the power that lies in the hands of the magistrate who gets to decide whether you'll be classified as a female or a male. And in a perverse way, calling me slut back then would have been an improvement over what was before. Sure it's an "improvement" in the sense that instead of taking your both legs they're just going to take your arm, but that's what it felt like and no, I'm not over it yet.

It's not just men who've called me those things, either - women, including some self-styled feminists, have done more than their fair share of it, too (for examples in English, just go look up Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel, Mary Daly and Germaine Greer. Nice, (white) middle-class people who wish people like me could be mandated out of existence). I don't feel safe with a random bunch of feminists. It's just as likely that there's some cissexist people around, and I'm not at all confident on the rest of the cis feminists' ability to call out the cissexist behaviour in their midst - my experience has been one of "oh just suck it up, they're all right otherwise". Err, right. I'm quite sure your attitude towards racism is just as dismissive.

Finally, there's the issue of dressing how you like. I'd just like to point out, that I had precisely no chance in hell of dressing in gender-appropriate clothes anywhere I liked until i was in my late 20s. Sexy or not. And this was policed not just by some moral-majoritarians, but by practically everyone. And that's one right I'd be ready to march for - the right of everyone and anyone to dress how they please, without ridicule, discrimination or oppression. But this is so far from the practice of a slutwalk that no, it just doesn't feel the right place for such a statement. If words and actions are at odds with each other, actions win for me every time.

The organisers do say that you don't have to own up to the word "slut" (in Finnish, sorry), but I think that's begging the question - if you march under such a well-publicised banner, how the heck are other people to know you don't, personally, own up to it? 

The practice of Slutwalk and the brand of feminism that goes with it just doesn't cut it with me. It's far too lightweight in my opinion, and doesn't do much to advance any of the pertinent issues - in fact, it just seems like a general call of young cis women to be able to dress as they like without having to fear rape or getting victimised for their dress or behaviour. It's a valid point, but to me personally it feels like arguing about the floorplan when the foundation's all rotten. 

The traumatic nature of being trans (on Planet Cis, that is)

The worst is not being able to trust other people much at all.

It's pretty logical, no?

Other people have managed to con you into believing you are not what you are, but something else instead. You find that out. You get mighty pissed, perhaps do a thing or two about it (like transition, maybe), and start really feeling the results. You're relatively safe from the forced assignments within your body and yourself - others may still mis- and/or ungender you, but at least you have a tendency of knowing yourself for what you are.

Here's the kick. When you realise that yes, most people have actively conned you (I'm not saying anything about consciously conning - it may well not be conscious, but the end result is still more or less the same) for, like, decades, it's not a happy moment. In fact, it may well feel like the ground opening under your feet. If other people can be so much in the wrong and so damn adamant about it and willing to spend so much time and energy defending their mistake, what else is there that they're wrong about? Suddenly, all bets are off.

This has, in my opinion, several consequences. One is that it's mighty hard to believe in yourself - in your own reasoning ability, in your own conclusions. No matter how well-founded your conclusions, you're still a human and still fallible. And since you've just had a glorious example of most of humanity failing big time, it doesn't bode well for you either, now does it?

Another is an active mistrust of others - if they managed to keep you from this central bit of information about yourself, what else are they hiding?

There's no easy answers to those. I don't know how to solve those problems - and they're my problems, too. How do you cobble together a trust broken from the very beginning? You've never had the experience of being able to trust - your very first relationships have been forced to fit into a mould that's simply wrong (I don't mean that for the cis it's completely right, but it is far less wrong as far as I can tell). There's no model of social stuff being right, only a broken model. I'm sorry this sounds so dejected, but the cissexist, cissupremacist world is a depressive place.

[Note that bodily issues don't enter into this much at all. Having a trans body is in itself relatively unproblematic - some aspects of your body might need medical attention, maybe surgery, maybe meds - and your body might not be that trans after all of those things - but that's just like having glasses, or corrective surgery, for defective vision. It's no big deal.]

It might get better, but it might not.

Dear trans girl,

It's possible it gets better. That's about as positive as I can get. Sorry about it - it is very depressing, but life sometimes is. I hope you get a bit less harassment, a little less violence, a little less un- and degendering. I really do, from the bottom of my heart. But I can't promise that. No-one can. Don't believe just anything you're said - evaluate the statements yourself. That applies to this piece, too.

I sincerely hope you will find peace. Peace with myself wasn't actually that hard to get. Peace with others... shall we say that's a war in progress? And, unfortunately, it's not yet us who are winning. People do think their way of seeing and thinking and living sex and gender trumps our experience.

Stick by the people who really are loyal to you. And to hell with the others. Really. If someone gets onto your tits, don't spend too much time with them - there's so many idiots and so little time. It's just not worth it, educating the unwilling. They just sap your energy, will to live and generally suck the joy out of your life. Sod them. But the ones who do love you - love them to bits. Never, ever let them down.

Don't be too disappointed when people close to you let you down. It's not unusual. It's incredibly sad, but I've seen it happen so many times I find it hard to be surprised at anything any more. There's no bottom to the depths of stupidity, meanness and plain ol' cis privilege.

Love your own. Help other trans girls and women. Even when they're being arses. I try to do that, too. 

Above all else: Love yourself. Get help. Be brave. Be smart. Be the girl you are.

Oi, journo, U R doing it wrong.

Even if you mean well.

Yes, it's the eternal "people who changed their sex" -trope. The latest incarnation of which surfaced in my morning newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat (1st of Nov, 2010, page D1. Sorry, can't find a copy available online, available as dead trees, or behind a paywall only). The story is about three people at different places in the trans universe - a trans woman, a trans man and a male transvestite (well, the male bit is never said aloud, it's just assumed. I suppose the writer has never heard of female transvestites). The story's stated aim is to enlighten the readers on what sex/gender roles look like, but in fact it doesn't analyze the sex/gender roles and the accompanying gender policing much at all. It just displays these three subjects in a human interest angle.

They're not treated too shabbily on the whole, but yet again, it's the framing of the story that sucks rotten eggs. The story is presented as "people who've experienced living as both a man and a woman..." (see page A3 if you've got the dead tree edition), there's the "changed their sex" -subheading (page D1: "Two people who've changed their sex and a transvestite tell what sex/gender roles look like") - in short, it's all about the voyeuristic, sensationalist cis mentality and blatant use of cissexist power to frame things.

I'm pretty sure the journalist in question means well. It isn't quite the hate-filled piece that misgenders and ungenders the trans subject constantly, but it fails nevertheless: the whole ciscentric premise that people really are of the sex/gender they're assigned at birth is just so full of fail. The story leaks at the seams: the trans woman is allowed to say she "had manhood pounded into her head" - but still the story assumes and reinforces that she actually was a boy/man (there's the stupid "biological male" -thing, too, but as that seems to be her own description of herself, I can't really comment on that), and can, therefore, tell what it was like to be a man. Not what it was like to be mistaken for a man. If she really was a man, why was the pounding necessary? And who, exactly, did the pounding? She herself, perhaps? I think not.

People assume all kinds of things about other people's sexes, genders and bodies. They assume, for example, that if someone "looks like a man", ze must be a man, and male, and assigned male at birth, too. That is simply not true. Looking like x is not the same as being x, and woman does not equal femininity does not equal female does not equal being assigned female at birth - all those bits may be related to each other, and they often are. But that's no universal rule. So it's rather stupid to assume that - and to assume that a trans man, for example, might know what it's like to be a woman.

I'd even hazard a guess that he does not know what being a woman is like, as he may never have been a woman. He's been mistaken for one, but that's not even remotely the same. Being of a sex is not the same as (mistakenly) being perceived as of a sex. The subject is not the same. I am a woman. You probably perceive me as a woman. My being and your perception probably agree, but even if they didn't, your perception does not automagically trump my being, not even if you force your perception on me.

So, dear journalists, please. Listen, carefully, to the people you interview. Especially when you're basically venturing out of your everyday experience (yeah, I'm assuming the journalist plus possible subeditors in question are cis - I think that's a pretty safe assumption). Your assumptions on how unfamiliar stuff works are, more often than not, simply wrong.

(Not that I'm expecting these things to change anytime soon - after all, I'm just a lone trans woman with a blog, and a cis journo with a big newspaper on her back, compared to me, is a bit like a soldier driving a battle tank towards a girl with a rock in her hand).

Educating people doesn't help

That's a bit of a lie, actually. Education does work, it educates. But it doesn't work in the way many (middle class) activists think it does. Education doesn't stop people from discriminating against each other. In fact, it may well make people more proficient at discriminating.

The crucial question is what you're educating people in.

If you raise people's consciousness about, say, trans women, you're doing just that, and no more. You're not fighting oppression. Your consciousness-raising may have some effects to that end, but it's in no way guaranteed, nor is it certain in any way that your consciousness-raising isn't having the exact opposite effect of making the discrimination even more acute.

This is why: giving more information on trans women (I'm using our experiences as examples because I know those the best), our bodies, our hardships and lives in general makes us even more of a target. The more we are exposed to scrutiny, the more visible we are as trans, the better chances the oppressors have of spotting us as potential targets for discrimination, and there's just so much more surface area to attack, too. The mundane things you do with your body become available for public consumption - your relationships start taking all kinds of weird colourings in the minds of the majority. Majority starts seeing things that aren't there, but that doesn't stop the majority from seeing nonexistent things as real, such as the sex you were forcibly assigned at birth, or sexualities you would never know for your own. Educating people on what is doesn't necessarily change their cognitive frameworks in the least - it might reinforce the (false) frameworks instead. It's the old "don't confuse me with the facts" -thing that leads to "but you were a man, right?" -questions, and to endless headdesking on the part of the trans woman. As if it were so simple. As if the majority got sex and gender right in the first place.

Giving people more information about oppressed minorities also doesn't call the discrimination itself into question in any serious way. The focus is on the minority's deviance from the (unquestioned) norms of the majority, not on the prejudices and asshattery of the majority. Yet it's the behaviour of the majority that is the problem - the existence of the minority and its habits, phenotypes and stuff are incidental. Exposing the oppression borne by the minority may work as an appeal to pity, but it doesn't address the actual problem much at all.

The actual problem, of course, being discrimination and other reprehensible behaviour. Raising consciousness on that might help, but stopping oppression is not about the oppressed, it's about stopping the oppressors.

Why we probably need strictly trans-women-only spaces

Relationship abuse. That's why.

Helen G reported couple of days ago on the depressingly expected results (pdf) to research on domestic abuse against trans people. I also stumbled on a story at The Spectrum Café on crossdressers' problems, and I realised that those problems are definitely not limited to crossdressers alone: the power dynamic in a lesbian relationship, where one of the women is cis, and the other is trans, but not quite come to terms with her stuff yet, can be scarily similar.

Imagine: a trans/cis lesbian couple lives like their life was one of a cissexual, heterosexual, cisgender couple. One of the partners, however, knows that this is not strictly speaking true, but for a lack of words, courage, or just plain fear for her own safety keeps her mouth shut. She knows something is not quite right, the dynamic of the relationship isn't quite the cishet dynamic it's expected to be. The other, cis partner, is at least consciously unaware of this, or if not, wants to be unaware - there are no prizes given by the larger, sexist and cissexist society, to those who start messing about with its hallowed cishet structures, especially when such messing about goes against not only heterosexism, but cis- and plain sexism as well.

Anyway. The trans woman finds out a name, or several names, for the situation she's in. She finds out that she might actually be a woman, and that her coercively assigned manhood is a... lie. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the possible consequences of acting out on such information can be. Amicable divorce (if they've already gotten married) is kinda nice outcome - if they have children together, the trans woman faces a very real prospect of losing her family altogether, and a substantial chunk of her income, too. Which also tends to plummet when one transitions - that's no rocket science, either.

So, what's the trans woman to do? "I'll give the family a shot but if it goes titsup, it will, and no can do - I'll likely transition anyway, and those two are not strictly connected" was my choice, but I now realise that this is not at all a common choice. The common choice is, I think, trying to negotiate your way into transitioning with the family. Asking for permission, if you like - in order to minimise the collateral damage.

What scenarios that leads to? There's at least two I can think of, and I've seen both happen many times.

The first is the "come out, get a divorce" -scenario. Once the trans woman speaks about the need to transition, the family implodes and that's that - if she's lucky, she can see her children and isn't destitute afterwards. If things go bad, she's not only cut off from her family, but totally broke, too.

The second, however, is ominous. The trans woman brings up that she really isn't a man, or somesuch stuff - the exact details don't matter. She asks for support. The cis woman, on her part, is shocked, or perhaps flat out disbelieves the seriousness of what's said. Once the situation develops a bit, and it becomes increasingly clear that trans woman's, well, womanhood, isn't going away, transitioning becomes a war of attrition on part of the cis woman partner. The trans spouse is kept from transitioning by controlling her, controlling her body, controlling her access to medical resources, controlling her visibility as a woman (either by threatening with forced outing or threatening with divorce if she does come out at circles not approved of by the cis spouse) and, of course controlling her access to other trans women. This can be subtle - painting other trans women as irresponsible, selfish failures who definitely are not worth associating with and then painting the trans woman partner as someone who's so much more responsible and rational - or it can be a lot more blatant, as in not letting the trans woman partner go to support group meetings, transcentric events, trans-women-only message boards, seeing a doctor to talk about her medical needs or even plain violence.

That the aforementioned is totally fucked hardly needs an explanation. What it does do, however, is introduce a cis-made split into trans women's lives - we're cut off from each other. Women early in their transitions don't get the role models of real, live trans women going on about their lives, working, living, loving and fighting on the planet cis, but get only the bits that suit their cis spouses - and somehow I think that the societally instilled sexism, transphobia and cissexism do affect the choice of such bits.

Because of all of the above, I'd like to have something. I'd like to have a trans-women-only space.  Where it wouldn't matter squat where you are in your transition, wouldn't matter where exactly you want to go, but if you wouldn't mind people identifying you as a trans woman, you'd be welcome. You'd be welcome to a space not controlled by cis people. Where what you say will not be scrutinised by the cis. Where questioning cissexist notions is welcome, and common. No cis women bossing around and telling us what we can do, say or be. No need for apologies, or for policing cis-instated norms on behalf of the cis. Where said policing can be dismissed for what it is: controlling. Controlling the way we speak, act, live and love. I want to get rid of that controlling so I can speak with my sisters face to face and expose the coercion and abuse for what it is.

Yeah, I know, won't be easy, but it's worth a shot, dontcha think?

Let's all bury our heads in the sand? The fuck I will.

This is a post on my brief foray into a local forum for trans feminine spectrum people and their significant others, but the issues are not limited to that forum - I've experienced similar stuff elsewhere, too. This is an outline of why I increasingly opt out of that stuff.

Here's what I like:

• people across transfeminine spectrum co-operating on common and not-so-common issues.
• being able to talk about difficult issues.
• trans-centricity.
• some common decency.

Somehow, more often than not, I've ran into problems wrt all of the above.

The relations between transvestites and trans women seem to be tense. My take on that is that there's plenty of phobia on both sides: transvestites perhaps fearing us trans women are seen as somehow contagious, that we infect transvestite men with the virus of transsexuality and then turn them into women. It's not entirely unreasonable, though - the common joke about the difference between a transvestite and a trans woman being five years is not entirely a joke. Some trans women do approach transition from that position, and it's a perfectly valid angle. I understand this might cause some concern amongst transvestites and especially their cis spouses, as hormones, surgery and legal sex change aren't exactly seen as a favourable outcome of coming out of the closet as a transvestite. Trouble is, it happens, and it won't go away just by refusing to talk about it, or beating around the bush and trying to give the impression it doesn't happen, like, ever. The motivation might be pacifying the cis spouses, but that pacification is based on a rather limited edition of the truth, and I'm pretty sure the cis spouses will find out, sooner or later, and then you'll be deep in doo-doo.

From my side of the pond, I can say being lumped with transvestites isn't always that hot, either. Transvestism is still often seen as something provisionary and elective, which I've come to understand is not the case; a transvestite probably can't choose if he wants to dress in woman's clothes no more than I can choose if I'm a woman or not. Yet that seems to be something that's trotted out by a disgruntled relative/friend/spouse when the issue of not being entirely of the sex assigned to you at birth comes up. It's the "why can't you just stop" -trope. And transvestites, seemingly, can stop, at least for some time - and stopping being a woman, for a trans woman, is about as possible as for an unsupported stone at height to not drop in standard gravity. I suspect it's the same for anyone who's somehow trans; you can't get the cause of trans out of you, you just have to live with it somehow, either eliminating the most of the underlying stuff (I'd call this transition), or finding some other ways to live with it. Trans doesn't seem go away. It's wishful thinking to think that you, or your friend/lover/child/whomever, can just repress it indefinitely.

I think there's a lot of common ground for male transvestites and trans women - it's not like the oppression is totally different: we're tarred with the same brush, and general public still isn't too keen on our differences. But the fear of the other just seems too great, and the investment in the tolerance given by the cis keeps many of us in their places, too, and makes them side with the oppressor, trying to silence people speaking out.

Talking about oppression and pejorative language seems to be a really hot button. I really don't understand why it provokes such intense feelings, but it does. Commenting that "tranny" is generally offensive can be met with loud claims that it isn't for the claimant. That may very well be the case, but it doesn't do squat about the general case. Tranny's no compliment, it's a slur, and no amount of "but it isn't for me" changes that on a universal basis - perhaps a more universal reclaiming might do that, but I'm pretty sure its time isn't quite yet. I am perplexed, however, why anyone trans would claim its unoffensiveness loudly in a discussion supposedly about the word's general, offensive usage (and why you really shouldn't use it about anyone specific, either, unless you're pretty damn sure it's accepted). Internalised cissexism? I never thought I'd run into anything that would bring up that particular concept in my mind, but I have, now. As if we weren't worthy of decent treatment. And, more importantly, as if we weren't oppressed and discriminated against, and as if that wasn't a bad thing. Puh-leeze. Stopping speaking about oppression doesn't make it go away.

I love transcentricity. I love the places that are for us, by us. There's the whole wide ciscentric world out there for the cis people - I really love the spaces where I can breathe freely, without anyone cis breathing on my neck with privilege, watching that I stay on my cis-allotted place. Or even if there are cis people around, it's still not about them. Of course some cis people will try to make it about them - I can understand that, and while they have my sympathy, it's not a demand that should be indulged in. Plenty of ciscentric spaces around, hardly any transcentric. Transcentricity is rather hard to come by, however.

And finally, common decency and not getting all riled up when it isn't about you in particular is very nice indeed. It also seems to be rather rare. I suspect this is a common phenomenon when discussing emotional subjects - it becomes mighty hard to separate the issues from the person. Yet, it's pretty hard to discuss anything worthwhile and important if you can't speak your mind on subjects that provoke emotions, so I think this is something we all just have to learn to live with. Strong emotions will be provoked, we have to learn how to behave like adults do, and not fly into a fit of rage if someone dares to disagree with us. If their case is bad, it probably isn't too hard to show why that's so, and while the disagreement probably won't go away, it's still possible to discuss the issues instead throwing a fit each time someone says something controversial.


The warning signs I should have heeded

• spouses-only board on an otherwise at least nominally transcentric board. This is always, always a big warning sign. It means the cis spouses' concerns are favoured. It also means the people running the forum mean it's ok for things to be this way (see http://www.thespectrumcafe.com/?p=66 for an explanation as to why this is a bad idea).
• abusive language is tolerated. I wasn't aware of this, but noticed it almost immediately.
• moderation is not only ad hoc, but also invisible - completely deleted messages and threads are a prime example. Moderation needs to be open and visible. (for a simple introduction to the subject, see http://www.communityspark.com/how-to-effectively-moderate-forums/) This isn't quite as easy to notice, but once you hit it, you do notice it.

Silly me, didn't listen to myself.

[ETA warning signs]

Carto's special theory of trans

This is mostly a note to myself, and written perhaps more to clarify my thoughts to myself than for anything else.

Trans consists of actually being something of some other sex, or gender, than the sex, or gender, assigned to you at birth, or later, by others.

That's about it, really!

Trans is thus a problem of other people - the core of the problem being the forced assignment of sex and gender, and the (misplaced) faith of the majority in the correctness of the communal assignment.

Trans becomes a problem for the trans person hirself only if other people make it a problem.

This can happen by ungendering, misgendering, physical violence, denial of necessary facilities, denial of medical care - this is not an exhaustive list.

The problem is not trans. It's the oppression.

(the headline is a nod to Einstein, in case you wondered).

[ETA to clarify the second sentence]

Disclosure

I disclose my cis/trans -status when applicable. I decide when it is applicable. Not anyone else.

That's about it, really.

That's why I will be right pissed at you if you decide for me. I feel inclined to explain myself a bit. Here goes:

1. If I'm doing something trans-unrelated (that is, +90% of my time), it's not only irrelevant, but it also tends to be a major distraction to whatever I'm enjoying at the moment. Well, it's not such a distraction to me, but since good many other (mostly cis) people stop dead in their tracks when trans is mentioned, there's good sense for me in not saying anything about my cis/trans -status. Unless, of course, I want to discuss it endlessly and run in infinite loops around their prospective prejudices, instead of the enjoyable activity of my choice. It's really, really hard to get why I prefer not to disclose, isn't it? ;-)
2. If I'm doing something trans-related, it might be relevant. But unless everyone else puts their cis/trans status on the table, oh, just forget about it. Sure we can discuss my sex and gender, but you go first. There is one exception, however:
3. Which is, when I decide that I want to discuss my experiences of growing up as a trans girl, living the trans woman's life - trans being relevant and something I want to discuss and feel comfortable discussing. This does not happen that often, except maybe in this blog. I've been known to discuss this sometimes.

Just like Cedar wrote, I don't feel educating people is the way to stop cissexist oppression. The way to stop oppression is for oppressors to stop their oppressive actions, and perhaps apologise, too, and make amends. Doesn't have that much to do with education. Doesn't, indeed, have too much to do with me. Oppression isn't that difficult to spot. In fact, whenever you feel a sudden urge to police other people's actions without being able to pinpoint concrete examples (as in not hypothetical, but something that has actually happened) of bad consequences of said actions, there's a fair chance you're about to oppress someone. One doesn't need education to stop this, just chilling out a bit, taking a deep breath and seeing that nothing awful will happen even if you don't engage in said oppression is probably enough.

Carto goes gender (and grows iden-titties), #3

This is partially a response to a discussion on active and passive identities, but this is where I was headed anyway: why I prefer, and rather strongly at that, no identity actively whatsoever.

Firstly, on a philosophical level, I don't think identities are very real, or anything you should attach yourself to. I consider my identity to be rather ephemeral and passing, and I can't pin it down anywhere. To me, the question "what do you identify as?" is a bit meaningless: what would it change even if I did identify, say, as a woman? It might be a means to an end for me, sure, if I felt like I wasn't a woman already - a means to map out possible ways of being. But I can do that in other ways, too. If I feel like putting on culturally coded stuff, be that behaviour, looks, anything, I already can, resources permitting. If I want to behave in a genderqueer way, there's nothing stopping me. The question of what am I, what do I identify as is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant to me, and if forced, I'll just say I identify as myself.

This approach has its caveats. Firstly, there's the question of resources, and safety. I can very well say I can do whatever I want, but the fact is that if I haven't the resources needed - say, social networks for going out and partying the night away - I, in fact, can't. So the freedom isn't quite as expansive as it could be, if given infinite resources. Secondly, there's the question of me doing stuff that provokes reactions from other people: I, for example, cannot fuck around with gender in just any way if I want to live unharassed. The two are not mutually compatible in practice.

Secondly, what people in linked posts call passive identities tend to trump any active identity any time you're dealing with potentially stressful situations with people not entirely respectful of you. What you're being passed as tends to overrun whatever identity you claim whenever it'd be really important for you to be recognised as, passed as what you are (or identify as, in identity-speak). Whenever there's a disagreement, the majority vote seems to hold the sway. Now I don't think this is right, or an agreeable situation, but I think this is the way it is, here and now. For examples, have a look at stories on trans women in your local newspapers. Are they misgendered? Sensationalised? In my corner of the world, those two things are almost a rule. When the local newspaper (Helsingin Sanomat, 24th of Jan, page C1 in case you're interested) did a whole page piece on Jin Xing (she's coming to dance in Finland), what did they write about? That's right - it was her transition that got the attention - dancing was mentioned in passing ("the best dancer in the world"), and the writer didn't connect the two in any meaningful way I could decipher. Why bring her trans status up at all, then?*

Thirdly, I'm not that hopeful on humanity. I really don't think we can stop other people clinging to their silly ideas about how everything in the world is easy to chop into discrete sets of stuff: men, women, girls, boys, sick, healthy. It might be possible to change it if there was the good will plus willingness to understand and the humility to accept we're colossally wrong every now and then, but I don't think that exists. We're not always good, we're certainly not humble every one of us and the willingness to understand people different from you is seriously lacking. So I don't think the respect for other people's self-declared identities is going to be the be-all, end-all solution to the problems of segregation, violence, oppression and discrimination.

I guess I'm less interested in frameworks, and more interested in solving practical problems, mine included. Like getting journalists (Wikipedia's another repeat offender) to stop shitting on trans women because we've transitioned every time one of us manages to do something wonderful and amazing and noteworthy - anything at all. Not everything we do can be derived from our transitions.

Writing the last sentence felt like talking down to someone particularly thick - I really think cissexuals should be able to get that bit on their own.

*yes, a trick question. Of course it's important to put the uppity trans woman in her place as a circus freak. God forbid they'd just write about her dancing when there's this unspeakable act of daring to raise against the gender forcibly assigned to her at birth. It's the modern-day equivalent of blasphemy.

Cissupremacism

I've been searching for a word to describe the attitude of the likes of Greer, Jeffreys, Raymond, Hausman and their ilk - the word is cissupremacism.

It's the belief that the sexes and genders embodied by cis bodies are better, more valuable, more real than the sexes and genders embodied by trans bodies. I really don't understand how this is compatible with feminism, but then again, I don't need to: I'm not trying to say it is.

Why academic writing on trans is pretty shite, short version

Has it ever occurred to anyone academic that we just might simply be mistaken about sexes and genders every now and then when we do the initial, forced sexing? Anyone?

(have been browsing Transgender Studies Reader. It's pretty awful reading, to be honest. I'm not sure if I can manage to read it all - the mistakes and the hate reeks so badly. If I was a Roman Catholic I'd perform an exorcism on the book)

I'll write something better when I'm up to it. But yeah, it makes for pretty godawful reading.

Self-censorship

or, why it is so difficult to be an outspoken trans woman even within the feminist blogosphere

It's pretty obvious it is difficult to be thus, isn't it? It's not like there's hordes and hordes of us to start with, and even less who are willing to engage with the feminists (or anyone, for that matter) after our transitions are done and dealt with.

Firstly, there's the age-old issue of out/closeted, which is not the same wrt cis/trans axis as it is for people along homosexual/heterosexual -axis (which I consider to be a bit of a ruse, but I digress). Speaking from the position of a trans woman is fraught with difficulties: there's always the old transphobic tropes (for a list, see QT, under Trans 101), the endless derailing and decentring of trans concerns, but, and I think this is even more important, there's a real risk of humiliation, ostracism and violence, not only in the academia/blogosphere, but in the meatspace we live in. Woman's trans status can, and is often used to beat her into submission. "Outing" someone as trans puts the woman thus outed at risk. If you don't believe me, just dig a bit at your local newspaper archives and see for yourself how trans women are depicted. There are a number of common features: there's the degendering by the use of her old name; printing pictures of her forcibly masculinised* is pretty common, too. All that is simply crap one doesn't want to deal with, and while silence is quite a price to pay for avoiding that crap, it's pretty understandable.

Secondly, because of our rather unprivileged pasts with regards to feminism, women's studies, gender studies, queer studies and what have you (no, in case you were wondering, those fields did (and maybe do) not welcome trans girls into the fold of feminism and queer: trans girls are more often than not gendered as boys, or men, and are hardly given the same space to explore their sexes and gender the way female-assigned-at-birth -people are. Cissexism does not stop at the door to academia.

So, when I look at the queer studies I do recognise the stuff there is pretty vital to my thinking, but I also feel I'm not welcome. I feel the thinking I do is rather far from the atmosphere they're breathing, and while I do think there's value in my perspective, I find my perspective hard to communicate and possibly triggering hostile responses. I'm not always up to that hostility.

I'll write another piece on my perspectives - at least I can give them a home here.

In short, I don't believe the binary system at all. There is gender, but there's a lot more of them than two. I think lesbian woman is a different gender (and maybe sex, too) from heterosexual woman. I think femme is a different gender from butch, or from heterosexual woman. When I use words like "woman", "man", or "heterosexual", my mind has to make these somersaults to translate what I'm thinking into cis-ese. I think of sexualities in terms of attractions: what do you like? If you like snogging bearded men, you're "snogs-bearded-men-sexual" for all I know. If you're a bearded man yourself, more power to you, but it doesn't mean squat as far as your attractions are considered.

The violent game which cises play with genders makes me sick. I don't want to play, but fucking up the system totally has such a high price I cannot pay it on my own, and not playing is not an option. I play, but not willingly. I play 'cos cis men might smash my face in for not playing, for telling it like it is - that cis boys and men brutalise trans girls and women and force them (and yours truly in the past) to pretend to be boys and men. I play 'cos cis women might simply dump me for not playing. I play 'cos it seems to be the price of admission into the society of humans, and I cannot survive on my own.

But in my heart, I want to smash the cisarchy.

[ETA 21:36 EEST: * forcibly masculinised: this what the cises might call "when she was a man" Trans girls and women do not choose to be assigned and raised as boys and men - it is forced. It's not voluntary, and very often, violence is used to enforce compliance.]

The stress of not being cis

It's not stressful because of the oddities in my biochemistry. It's not because of surgery. It's not, even, because of the disturbing memories. It's because cises won't let it lie.

It's because they keep on picking the scab and the new skin that's forming underneath, because they reopen the wounds I've been trying to close all my life. It feels like cises are deliberately trying to bleed me to death and stop me from trying to stop the bleeding.

The logic goes like this. I hurt because my biochemistry and some bits of my body and some legal details are simply all wrong for a girl. I have them fixed, am happy as a clam. But cis people won't let it lie there. They want to talk about it. They want, specifically, talk about the mistake they made in misgendering me as a boy, and keep on talking about it, and probably feel cuddly'n'everything about having given me the chance to transition, but they won't admit they've made a mistake in gendering me as a boy. It doesn't matter if all the evidence points in that direction, it doesn't matter that the sex hierarchy doesn't work in many other cases, either, it's like if the facts don't agree with the sex hierarchy, so much worse for the facts.

In short, I feel like I'm treated as a deluded loonie who's given what she insists on having because she'd be way too much trouble otherwise.

The cises don't want to forget. It's all so fascinating from their point of view. And many, too many of them really do think the problem is me, and my mind, and not my body and their minds, even though it's precisely my body, and their minds, that've been fixed. Except they actively resist the fixing, 'cause they can't see anything much wrong in assuming that gendering and sexing is as simple as A, B, C. I, and many other people, are, of course, living proof of that not being the case.

I can't help being the living proof. And I don't find it acceptable that I'd have to accommodate to cis majoritys' prejudices and phobias, I don't want to play along. Playing along has too high a price. Playing along would mean I'd have to give an account of myself to any passers-by who feels like questioning. Playing along means accepting people having my personal life and intimate details of my body as coffee-table talk. It seems rather, um, unfair to me that I'd be required to give in to that whereas none of the cises has to. They have a right to privacy. I should, too.

Lack of privacy is the main stressor for me. My past feels like a huge millstone that I can put away whenever cises don't know I'm not cis. But some cises who do know seem to need to tell other cises, as sort of a warning that I'm not cis. And I can tell it, from the looks of the cises who scrutinise my looks, my voice, my mannerisms - it's like being on display for the cises. It makes me even more self-conscious than I already am. Cises run around and find the damn stone and hoist it around my neck again and again. I'm not asked, of course.

It's not like I have a solution. I don't. But somehow I'm gonna get this stress out of my system, and I won't take just accepting it as an answer - cises don't have a right to treat me like this. They don't treat other cises this way, either.

Coming to terms with pain

I guess I'm slowly, slowly inching towards my pain. Towards the things that have been done to me. Towards the pain those things caused me. Towards a realisation that many of the oppressing structures are still intact, still capable of causing pain. Towards an unflinching gaze at the horrible reality that is humans.

But it is, too, a reality through which some people really love me. It's also a reality in which I have found happiness and ecstasy: it is the reality in which I cry for joy. Because of the wild joy that is being me. Because of the rich pleasure of having someone love me. Because of my children.

I cannot dismiss the pain. I cannot dismiss the joy. Somehow I'm trying to come to terms with both.

This is probably why I'm reading trans feminist writings - I'm trying to make sense of my experiences, I'm looking for a frame of reference that would give my experiences a space in which they're intelligible: and of course I'm forming that space myself, too.

Serano's Whipping Girl was, obviously, one big influence on this road to intelligibility, as was Wilchins' Read My Lips, and I'm very glad to say Troost's Beyond Inclusion makes good sense, too.

When examining my pain, there's this huge grief enmeshed with it: a grief born of not having had the normal girlhood which would have no doubt been a lot less debilitating than what I got.

It's such a two-edged project: on one hand, it's very empowering to realise what has happened to me, and on the other, it's very painful to realise the simple amount of crap I've had to wade through. There's just so much of it. There's the bullying. There's the forced masculinisation. There's the homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, trans misogyny, plain misogyny and simple hate directed at anyone who's visibly, palpably different. There's the silence of medicine: the withheld information, the power imbalance which I dare see now that I'm past it. There's the feeling of utter powerlessness against the cissexist, plain sexist, homophobic world. Hell, at least I know (I hope, anyway) the crap I've been through. I hope it defuses the effects of a bad things in my past a bit. I hope I'm no longer driven by the shit done to me.